Church of St Peter Chooses Technology Over Chemicals

Jeff Peterson had a problem. Forced by the Coronavirus to use harsh chemicals to clean and disinfect the Church of St. Peter In North St. Paul, Minnesota. Peterson, the Chief of Staff, quickly noticed the effects those chemicals were having on his beloved church.

"The CDC was recommending a combination of Clorox and bleach type of cleaning to disinfect all the different areas, whether it was the doors, the pews and so forth," says Peterson. "As we started that process, we quickly discovered that we were destroying the finish on all of the wood in the beautiful church and we immediately recognized a serious problem.

Peterson and his crew started to investigate other options, but none of them looked promising initially.

"At that point we were looking at hydrogen peroxide", says Peterson. "And while we knew it was safe for wood we also knew there was a downside in what it might do to in terms of employees who would have to use it, if they got it on their clothing or something like that. So, we knew that wasn’t a great choice.

Then, a staff member at St. Peter told Peterson about Stabilized Aqueous Ozone(SAO), a sustainable cleaning product from Green Science Solutions that converts water into a safe, natural, sustainable cleaning product that is more powerful than chlorine bleach.

We met with Michelle, she came in, she showed us a demonstration of the actual components and how it works, and then she started taking different swabs from our pews, showed us what the cleaning information looked like, and once we saw the results from the sanitation of this simple method of adding extra molecules to water we thought, this is a good, good situation.

Now, thanks to SAO, Jeff Peterson no longer has a problem with cleaning the Church. However, getting other churches to take the leap of faith they have at St. Peter of North St.Paul, now that's another story.

I know it’s really hard to understand the water being put on a surface and that’s supposed to sanitize and disinfect? Give them the opportunity to come in, let them demonstrate, let this “water” which is essentially harmless do to you, let them show you what the effects are." Adds Peterson, "We use it as hand sanitizer when we’re actually sanitizing the church so, I’d say, give it a shot. It’s hard to imagine that water is going to do this but it works.

Learn more about Stabilized Aqueous Ozone!